Elon Musk has overhauled the platform X, previously often known as Twitter, and made quite a lot of controversial modifications.
Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic by way of Getty Photographs
Elon Musk‘s $44 billion deal to accumulate Twitter triggered a rollercoaster of chaos.
Musk renamed the platform X, let go of hundreds of employees, and made main modifications to the web site.
Here is a timeline of what is gone down at Twitter since Musk took over.
Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion in late 2022, following a tumultuous, months-long authorized battle. Since then, the billionaire has carried out quite a lot of controversial modifications which have made each the web site and the corporate almost unrecognizable.
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Musk spent a lot of 2022 musing about shopping for Twitter and quickly shopping for shares within the firm, whereas publicly accusing the platform of undermining free speech, censoring conservative voices, and exhibiting left-wing bias.
By the spring of 2022, Musk had acquired a 9% stake in Twitter and made a suggestion to purchase it outright for $44 billion. Initially, Twitter responded with a “poison capsule” to dilute Musk’s stake and stave off a hostile takeover. However by late April, Musk and Twitter struck a deal for $44 billion.
Inside weeks, Musk was threatening to again out of the deal, blaming Twitter for failing to supply data on spam bots and pretend accounts. Twitter sued Musk to drive him to observe by way of with the deal, and Musk countersued Twitter. However Musk backed down later that yr, shortly earlier than the case was set to go to trial, and agreed to the unique $44 billion deal.
For the reason that acquisition, Musk and X have confronted quite a lot of lawsuits, slashed 80% of Twitter’s workforce, and overhauled the platform in quite a lot of methods. And although the corporate has aimed to turn into worthwhile in 2024, Musk has additionally publicly mentioned the corporate has struggled mightily with a drop in promoting income. Some estimates have valued the corporate as being value 71% lower than when Musk purchased it.
From strolling into Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters with a toilet sink, to renaming the corporate X, this is a timeline of how Musk’s chaotic takeover of the corporate unfolded, and the way his reign has impacted employees and customers alike:
October 2022
On October 28, 2022, identical day Musk formally acquired Twitter, the billionaire ousted quite a lot of its executives, together with CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, chief authorized officer Vijaya Gadde, and senior authorized counsel Sean Edgett.
All 4 of these executives have since sued Musk and X, alleging that they are owed $128 million in unpaid severance, and over $1 million apiece in authorized charges they accrued throughout their Twitter careers.
Together with the acquisition, Musk additionally took Twitter non-public, which means it’s not a public firm, and was formally delisted from the New York Inventory Alternate in November 2022. The transfer gave Musk full management, liberating him as much as make modifications with none boards or meddling shareholders to restrain him.
A day earlier than the deal was finalized on October 27, Musk walked into Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters carrying a big toilet sink, seemingly a reference to it “sinking in” that he was turning into Twitter’s new chief.
Certainly one of his first orders was to direct Twitter engineers to work on a relaunch of video app Vine.
After Musk’s first all-hands assembly with Twitter employees, many discovered that Yoel Roth, the pinnacle of belief and security, had resigned. Robin Wheeler, who was beforehand the promoting gross sales chief, additionally resigned however was satisfied to remain.
Twitter despatched engineers a memo calling for “maniacal” work and a willingness to counsel concepts to Musk. Engineers had been additionally advised to succeed in out to Musk straight with “cool product” pitches for the platform.
Musk tweeted on October 30 that “the entire verification course of is being revamped proper now.”
Cofounder Jack Dorsey retained an oblique stake in Twitter even after Musk took over. Dorsey agreed to roll over his 2.4% stake to Musk’s holding firm, X Holdings I Inc. Dorsey’s 18 million shares had been valued at simply over $1 billion, in response to SEC filings.
Musk gave extra particulars on the approaching modifications to Twitter’s verification mannequin on November 1. He tweeted that Twitter’s “lords & peasants system for who has or would not have a blue checkmark is bullshit.” He added: “Energy to the individuals! Blue for $8/month.”
Lots of of workers had been let go in Musk’s first spherical of Twitter layoffs on November 4. Per week after Musk took the helm, he despatched workers an e-mail confirming rumors that layoffs had been imminent.
The memo mentioned they’d discover out the following day if their roles had been affected by the cuts. Nonetheless, some employees acquired discover they’d misplaced their job that very same night. Some Twitter workers misplaced entry to their e-mail accounts and firm methods that night time.
The next week, Musk issued remaining workers an ultimatum: work at an “extraordinarily hardcore” fee to construct “Twitter 2.0” or settle for a three-month severance package deal. Musk despatched workers an e-mail at midnight PT on Wednesday, a timestamp on the e-mail seen by Enterprise Insider confirmed. The self-described “chief Twit” mentioned within the e-mail that workers had been anticipated to work “lengthy hours at excessive depth.”
A number of dozen Twitter workers had been fired by Musk the night time earlier than Thanksgiving, regardless of saying in an all-hands assembly the week earlier than that there can be no extra layoffs.
Lots of of former Twitter workers who had been fired upon Musk’s takeover have since sued X for unpaid severance.
After Musk launched the Twitter Blue subscription, which permits anybody to pay to be verified, it led to a wave of weird and comical impersonations of public figures and types. Some customers could not distinguish whether or not it was an official account belonging to public figures or manufacturers – or impersonators.
December 2022
Musk mentioned bills had been “fairly below management” after claiming in November that Twitter chapter was a chance for the corporate.
He relaunched Twitter Blue, which included gold test marks for verified enterprise accounts.
Dozens of unused places of work in Twitter’s San Francisco HQ had been changed into bedrooms in December for Musk’s confidants, together with Jared Birchall. San Francisco officers later mentioned town was investigating and ordered Twitter to label them as sleeping areas or convert them again.
January 2023
Musk reduce a serious fertility profit for Twitter workers. Workers had been advised by way of an e-mail {that a} profit that covers as much as $80,000 in fertility-related prices can be halved.
Twitter places of work in Hong Kong, the Philippines, Mexico, and Africa began shutting down in a bid to chop prices.
February 2023
Musk introduced that Twitter API entry would not be free, revealing plans to start out charging $100 monthly for the essential tier of the API in a bid to do away with bots.
The following month, Twitter began to roll out tiered entry to its API, charging completely different quantities relying on the person.
March 2023
Twitter introduced it might be sunsetting its legacy blue-tick verified program — which Musk known as “deeply corrupted” — on April 1, 2023.
Earlier than Musk’s acquisition in October 2022, Twitter gave out blue checkmarks to authenticate lively accounts of “public curiosity” corresponding to these belonging to politicians, public figures, celebrities, and journalists. The platform independently verified such accounts.
Musk moved ahead with a generative AI mission, revealed as xAI in July, after he signed an open letter calling for an industrywide halt to any AI coaching for a number of months.
Might 2023
Elon Musk appointed Linda Yaccarino as the brand new CEO of Twitter.
Michael Gonzalez, Michael Buckner/Getty Photographs
Musk named Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s new CEO after saying in Might {that a} new chief would begin in round six weeks. He tweeted: “@LindaYacc will focus totally on enterprise operations, whereas I give attention to product design & new know-how. Trying ahead to working with Linda to remodel this platform into X, the all the things app.”
Musk additionally walked again the modifications to Twitter’s paid parental depart. The corporate’s HR advised workers in an e-mail that it might give them seven weeks of paid depart and birthing mother and father would obtain 9 further weeks.
Twitter introduced that corporations sharing data as a public service will be capable to begin utilizing Twitter’s API free of charge once more.
Representatives from software program agency Oracle began calling present and former Twitter employees to hunt cost for past-due invoices, which was not less than six figures. Musk additionally has excellent funds owed to corporations, together with Amazon and Google’s cloud companies and landlords of its places of work within the US, Europe, and Asia.
Meta launched Threads, a brand new text-based social-media community, in July and that very same night time Musk’s lawyer despatched the corporate a cease-and-desist letter claiming it was a “copycat” app. The letter claims Meta employed “dozens of former Twitter workers” to assist construct its rival app Threads. It additionally claimed Meta had been “crawling and scraping” Twitter knowledge on customers.
The weekend previous to Threads’ launch, Twitter’s “fee restrict” was quickly imposed on the variety of tweets customers may view and customers had been locked out from viewing posts for a number of hours. Musk later mentioned it was obligatory as a result of AI corporations had been scraping “excessive ranges” of knowledge from the platform, which meant it needed to “deliver giant numbers of servers on-line on an emergency foundation.”
Nonetheless, Musk and Yaccarino did not temporary employees on these modifications. Workers within the gross sales and promoting division did not get a response about what they need to say to purchasers about how the restrict would influence advertisements.
Musk introduced he was renaming the corporate as “X” and making it into an “all the things app”. Quickly after he scrapped Twitter’s fowl emblem in favor of a monochrome X and had an enormous X signal put in on its San Francisco headquarters. The signal was eliminated three days later after complaints rolled in.
August 2023
Musk mentioned X would preserve advert income from content material creators who do not have a Blue premium subscription. He continued to herald sweeping modifications corresponding to eradicating headlines of articles from X posts.
X was fined $4,447 by San Francisco’s Division of Constructing Inspection for putting in the X signal on the roof, which attracted 24 complaints, together with considerations that it regarded unstable and the flashing strobe mild from it may disturb close by residents.
September 2023
Musk laid off extra workers who labored on the belief and security group within the first week of September. The roles concerned conserving the platform protected for advertisers and customers. Between 5 and 10 individuals had been affected by the layoffs.
Yaccarino appeared at Code Convention and had a car-crash interview the place she appeared undermined by Musk, and appeared to battle to reply questions concisely. In a single section, she was requested about X’s day by day lively person numbers, and he or she responded with solely estimates, saying it had 200 million to 250 million day by day lively customers or “one thing like that.”
A biography on Musk by Walter Isaacson hit the cabinets in September.
It included revelations about his upbringing and character, corresponding to him going into “demon mode” — “when he goes darkish and retreats contained in the storm in his mind,” in response to his ex-girlfriend Grimes.
An EU Fee report discovered X had the highest quantity of Russian disinformation out of the most important social media platforms. It known as for Musk to ramp up its efforts to deal with disinformation. The European Fee’s vice-president, Vera Jourova, suggested Twitter that “we’re watching what you’re doing.”
October 2023
The SEC revealed it was investigating Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and requested a California federal courtroom to drive him to adjust to a Might subpoena asking him to take a seat for testimony.
The submitting revealed what the company mentioned has been “an ongoing nonpublic investigation by the SEC concerning whether or not, amongst different issues, Musk violated numerous provisions of the federal securities legal guidelines” together with his preliminary secret assortment of Twitter inventory in early 2022 and his later buy of the corporate, together with statements he made concerning the deal.
Knowledge supplied solely to Enterprise Insider’s Lara O’Reilly by the advertising consultancy Ebiquity confirmed that a big majority of X’s biggest-spending advertisers have stopped promoting on the platform since Musk acquired the corporate.
Simply two of Ebiquity purchasers, which accounts for 70 of the highest 100 top-spending advertisers, had bought advertisements on X in September, down from 31 manufacturers 12 months earlier.
“One is decrease value with all options, however no discount in advertisements, and the opposite is costlier, however has no advertisements,” he mentioned in a publish on X.
Musk advised his followers that they might get updates on the Israel-Hamas battle by following accounts recognized for peddling misinformation. He deleted the publish after three hours, however by that point it had been seen by 11 million customers.
Spring 2024
Musk’s Tesla started promoting on X. It is the circle of life.
Tesla is known for not promoting as a result of it did not must: Folks beloved the product, and Musk was actually good at selling it, free of charge, on X.
Now Musk has overpaid for Twitter, has seen lots of his advertisers flee, and is now (theoretically) paying to promote there himself.
That wasn’t the one shock of the season. As of Might 17, Twitter.com started redirecting to the X.com area. The corporate had began utilizing the X area lengthy earlier than then, however customers may nonetheless entry the Twitter.com URL if that is what they typed into their browsers.
The corporate notified customers of the change with a pop-up message saying, “We’re letting you recognize that we’re altering our URL, however your privateness and knowledge safety settings stay the identical.”
Customers used to have the ability to see all of the tweets or posts that different customers favored, however Musk mentioned he needed individuals to have the flexibility to love posts with out getting “attacked” for it. Now, customers are free to love controversial, edgy, or NSFW content material with out concern of retaliation.
